Angry in the Great White North

From an anonymous reader:

The KPMG forensic audit into affairs at the RCMP was just that: a forensic audit which found no criminal wrong-doing. Treasury Board policy states that all audits must be made public. So it is indeed curious that before the audit was finalized, the scope of the audit was changed to include management practices at CAC, for which Frank Brazeau is the only one being punished, as if he was the only guy responsible for management practices. And, has anyone noticed the audit is no longer an "audit"? Brison now calls it a "management review", presumably so he doesn't have to make the document public.

Isn't also curious that PWGSC deputy minister David Marshall has a close friend at the Globe and Mail - the reporter who "broke" this story without the KPMG report ever being made public? What gives? Why would the government leak this false story if it wasn't trying to deflect attention from itself?

And where is this Director General of Consulting? Did Bill McCann disappear? He was Brazeau's old boss. And where is the Director General of Corporate Services, Louis Vadeboncoeur? If I recall, these two guys were the ones who originally sent Brazeau home, with pay, without telling him why. [ed. I have independent knowledge of this meeting taking place] Now they apparently are on extended sick leave. What's the deal? Have they been punished too?

Makes you wonder why the government is going to such lengths to keep the truth buried. Is it because there really were funny things going on at CAC that the management endorsed? Were contracts given to companies or individuals linked to politicians? Wasn't there a story a few years back about Lansdowne Technologies, a company owned by Canada Steamship Lines (PM's company) receiving millions of dollars worth of contracts via CAC? [ed: I'll check this later today]

See, here's the problem: Brazeau did exactly what everyone else did at CAC, that is, help to identify skilled private sector resources for government clients. Why is this important? CAC was a fee-for-service special operating agency. It's livelihood depended on revenue from other departments. It charged for finding contractors, and also charged a mark-up on professional fees. For many years, it was in the red; therefore, management silently endorsed anything that would bring in revenues, including issuing contracts through dubious processes.

But, contracts can only be signed by those who have delegated authority. Brazeau did not have the delegated authority, so he never signed any contracts; he had no authority to do so (maybe McCann did and that's why he's "sick"). What Brazeau did was everything CAC management asked him to do, and he did it very well.

Meanwhile, The Gripe and Wail is spreading false information about Brazeau being a "contracting officer". This is simply not true. I guess the reporter didn't have time to check the material before printing it. Maybe if it's leaked from the deputy minister or from the minister, it doesn't need to be checked. Isn't there a word for that? Defamation? Slander?

You asked why it is that more people haven't come forward. I would suggest that those who are at CAC know that if this became public, they would really be in deep &@(* because their activities were way worse than anything Brazeau ever did.

But hey, shhhhh.... there's an election now and no one wants to embarass the governing party, right?

I have said before that I think the Abotech affair might be a smokescreen to hide from us from a more serious problem inside of CAC.

For what it's worth, both McCann and Vadeboncoeur are indeed on sick leave. In the case of Bill McCann, I noted that he never seem to have returned from his vacation, a vacation that happened at the same time as when Frank Brazeau was removed from the electronic government directory.

Maybe we can start getting some serious investigation going on what exactly is happening inside of Consulting and Audit Canada.